


The Stark Heirs

by SonglordsBug



Series: The Stark Heirs [2]
Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, Headcanon, Howard Stark Lives, Howard Stark being a good parent, Peggy's dead, Roleswap
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-16
Updated: 2018-12-16
Packaged: 2019-09-19 19:27:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonglordsBug/pseuds/SonglordsBug
Summary: When Peggy dies, it's a wake up call for Howard. Suddenly she's not there to clean up his messes and he has to figure out how to be a parent. He ends up managing okay and is very proud of all three of his kids.





	The Stark Heirs

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Carter Siblings](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007567) by [SonglordsBug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonglordsBug/pseuds/SonglordsBug). 



> crossposting from stumblr

When Peggy Carter develops dementia early, Howard Stark gets paranoid and is a horrible father. He believes that something must have happened and it leaves him jumping at shadows (just because he’s right doesn’t mean he isn’t irrational).

But when Peggy Carter is killed? Well, she’s the director of Shield and she’s been surviving crazy things for years, it was bound to happen eventually. When Peggy Carter is killed, Howard Stark is left with two heartbroken sons and a wake-up call. He and Maria didn’t have to parent, Peggy had taken care of it, cleaned up his mess the way she always cleaned his messes up. But she’s gone, she can’t do that anymore.

So he sits down and has an honest talk with his oldest boy, the one who defiantly snarls that he hasn’t got permission to call Pip, the one who once upon a time he nicknamed Pip when his boy was just a pipsqueak.

Years too late, Howard finally starts to learn how to be a father. He lets his bright, bold, boys into the workshop and shows them how to blow things up. He adds to the stories Peggy had told them about a good man and the crazy people who followed him. He spends less time on a boat in the arctic and more time watching baseball games. He still slips up on occasion, he’s not perfect, and eventually his sons have a sister.

Obadiah Stane tries to start his manipulations, because in every universe he wants power, but in this universe three clever children see right through him and go to Howard. And Howard listens, tells them they have to have proof, but helps them look, and when they find it, makes it public.

Things are different.

Phil doesn’t have a desperate urge to protect his siblings, so he doesn’t join the army, he’s too busy fooling around in the lab making things to want to learn to handle a gun, and then to handle people.

Tony doesn’t feel inadequate and disappointing, he has nothing to prove, so he follows his best friend into the air force and then lets himself be recruited to Shield.

Darcy is never left to feel like an accident, an afterthought, so instead of hiding away from the Stark name and everything it represents, she becomes the public face of the Starks.

Phil designs and invents the weapons. And then Darcy sells them. It’s a rare occasion when both the inventor heir and the sales heir both go out to the desert for a demo.

And so it’s not Tony who ends up kidnapped, but Darcy and Phil. It’s Phil who gets a chest full of shrapnel, who has to create an arc reactor to keep himself alive. It’s Darcy who puts on the first suit and learns to fly.

With two Starks at work things go faster and they don’t need a deadly distraction. And Tony takes three people home from the desert. And when they get home, an elderly Howard is there to welcome them and shake Yinsen’s hand in thanks for saving his kids.

And then they get to work fixing up and stream-lining this new armor thing, even as Darcy and Phil quietly and insistently change the company’s focus from weapons to energy.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [Too Many Tony's, Or, Nick Fury Has a Headache](https://archiveofourown.org/works/17007978) by [SonglordsBug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SonglordsBug/pseuds/SonglordsBug)




End file.
